Empty House
by opens up 4 nobody
Summary: Enjolras and Grantaire spend a few days trapped together in Éponine's allegedly haunted childhood home. Not that haunted houses are a thing that can exist. They may not agree on much, but obviously ghosts aren't real. Sure, sometimes weird and terrifying things happen without any apparent logical reason, but clearly ghosts aren't real.


"Wakey wakey, Apollo," Grantaire cooed teasingly. He was driving, one hand firmly planted on the wheel and jostling the sleeping blond in the passenger seat beside him. "We have nearly arrived."

Enjolras drew in a sleepy breath and rubbed a hand over his face, his first waking emotion was confusion. Waking up to Grantaire's mocking voice was not something that usually happened unless he had passed out somewhere unusual. For example, he had once fallen asleep while serving food for a local charity event. It was at the end of the evening, in his defense, and he'd actually been eating his own dinner when he fell asleep, but he happened to rest his face in his mashed potatoes and had awoken to Grantaire trying to unsuccessfully stifle his laughter and coax him awake as the event leader was trying to get his attention. The point was that it was an annoying way to wake up and set him immediately on edge.

"Where are we?" he mumbled, for a moment he could not for the life of him remember how he had ended up in this car. Looking out the window he caught a glimpse of a rusted old mailbox reading "Thénardier" in chipped white letters. They were turning up a steep driveway on a backwoods road in the apparent middle of nowhere. The terrain was uneven and the abrupt jostling of the car had Enjolras suddenly straining against his seatbelt. "Ah, right Éponine's," he remembered.

"Her parent's," Grantaire corrected, "but I'm glad to hear your brain is still working. I wasn't sure you were still alive over there. I stopped at a gas station and I'm pretty sure this lady thought I'd drugged and kidnapped you."

Enjolras shifted into a less painful sitting position, his body stiff from sleep. "Why was she staring into the car?" He wasn't surprised to hear that he had slept overwhelmingly deeply. Usually he was a fairly light sleeper, unless he'd run himself too thin (which happened all too often) and passed out from exhaustion as he had that morning after Courfeyrac had shoved him into Grantaire's car. He had spent all of last night doing as much work as possible before the winter break officially began, knowing that he would have limited internet connection in the approaching days. He hadn't intended to not sleep, as he had only slept all of three hours the night before on a similar mission, it just ended up happening. And so, he had apparently spent all four hours of the car ride, for better or worse, dead asleep and worrying random nosy ladies.

"While I went in she started tapping on the window and you wouldn't wake up. I knew you wouldn't wake up because I tried to wake you up before and you opened your eyes, but I'm like ninety percent sure you were still asleep." Grantaire winced as they hit a large pot hole at the top of the hill and turned left, continuing down the driveway.

"I don't remember it," Enjolras shrugged, "Why did she want my attention? Do I really look so horrible when I sleep that I attract the attention of strangers?"

"I dunno, she didn't seem all there. Tried arguing with me, but I blew her off and left. I was a little worried she might call the cops. Maybe we'll see her in town later and you can tell her I wasn't sex trafficking you or something."

"It would be pretty stupid to put me in the front seat if you were."

"I dunno, in the front I could keep an eye on you and it's less suspicious, I think." He was talking with the air of someone paying more attention to the road than the conversation. The driveway had opened up from forest to field, a little white house sat at the far end of said opening looking perfectly normal, perhaps a bit small and a bit ordinary. There was a kid's playset off to the side looking neglected next to a trampoline that seemed to have been blown half into the woods and no one had bothered to drag it back.

"Sensing any spirits yet?" Grantaire drawled as they approached.

Enjolars rolled his eyes. "Not a one."

Neither of them believed in that sort of thing, but it was why they were there. Or rather, they were there on Jehan's behalf. Their dear friend Jean Pouvaire had gone on a camping trip over the summer with his family and had at one point gone off my himself. While wandering around, presumably in search of either poisonous or edible plants and ignoring those in between, he had stumbled upon an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere. Upon making this discovery he had done the only thing he could and went inside without informing anyone or even thinking about any potential dangers. The front door was apparently unlocked and the house was filled with junk. He made his way into the kitchen where according to him, he heard someone say his name and when he turned there was a man standing in the darkened doorway. After that he had shrieked, thrown a discarded skillet through the window and crawled through, slicing his hands on the broken glass.

Since then he had been utterly obsessed with ghosts.

When Grantaire pointed out that Éponine had grown up in a haunted house which her family still owned, it was decided that a trip had to be arranged.

"Are you sure? You seem like the sort of person who might secretly have spirit sensing powers."

"I do not!" Enjolars stated in offense though he wasn't entirely sure what he was taking offense to. His brain was not yet fully awake.

"You do too. You seem so not likely to believe in the paranormal that you would have some sort of weird power and rationalize the hell out of it in order to retain your inflexible world view," Grantaire explained as if it were a perfectly reasonable conclusion to come to.

"You're one to talk on inflexible world views," Enjorlas grumbled. "And you don't believe in ghosts either, so all you're saying is that I seem like the sort of person who would see things that aren't there."

"Exactly. You see things that aren't there all the time: a hopeful future for this country, opportunities for change, faith in humanity... Shall I go on?"

"Not unless you want me to punch you. I'm not awake enough to argue and I'm not above causing you bodily harm."

"Apollo, you can cause me bodily harm anytime you like. But don't tell Jehan I said that, he might try to recruit you to recruit me as a guinea pig for his medical test mission."

Jehan, when he wasn't obsessing over the ghostly or writing poetry, was a particular sort of botanist. He looked back at ancient texts (mostly in Greek or Latin) in search of ancient remedies and he was always looking to test how well things worked on his friends. It had led to more than a few rashes and a fair amount of burning pain, though to date it was nothing Joly couldn't fix.

Jehan would obviously never intentionally harm someone in order to test one of his concoctions, but if they were already injured...

Enjolras rolled his eyes, done with this conversation. "Does that Montparnasse guy know we're here?" he asked, realizing neither of them had a key.

"Yep, I texted him when I stopped at the gas station. He said he'd be right behind us. I also let everyone else know we made it." They came to a stop at the gravel's end and Grantaire parked, looking up at the house before them. "Well, we made it without killing each other. There will be one less haunted car roaming the open roads."

"Sorry I slept the whole time," the blond sighed. Maybe it had saved a good deal of arguing, but Grantaire had made a very long drive without anyone available for conversation and all Grantaire seemed to do was talk. Talk and be obstinate.

"Ah don't worry about it, I listened to four hours of Hardcore History, it made for a less infuriating trip." he shrugged, turning as they heard crunching gravel up the driveway. "That must be the guy." He was driving a Gator.

Enjolras unsnapped his seatbelt and stepped out into the cold, Grantaire following suit. It was chilly but not freezing. Everything was very wet at the moment, so it had probably been raining earlier in the day. It had been a very wet winter thus far, not that it was officially winter yet.

The man who stepped out of the vehicle was tall, confident and just a little too smooth.

"You must me Montparnasse," Grantaire greeted, "I'm Grantaire and this is Enjolras. He just woke up so he might be a little cranky. Then again, he's always like that, so I don't know why I'm making excuses for him."

Enjolras shot the brunette a glare as Montparnasse laughed. "Good to meet both of you. I'm on kind of a tight schedule, so I hope you don't mind a speed tour. I've gotta get out if here by four, if you just wanna follow me." He didn't wait for a response, walking toward the front door, key in hand. "How's little Éponine, by the way? And the kid. I didn't know the kid well," he asked as he unlocked the door.

"She's good, glad to be off on her own. Gavroche too. Both doing very well," Grantaire said, diplomatically. In all likelihood Éponine had instructed Grantaire to say as little as possible about her to anyone who might ask. She had cut all ties when she left. It had taken a lot of convincing to get her to contact Montparnasse about the house.

"Right," their guide snickered, "Never thought I'd hear from her again. She was always a mean kid when I knew her, tried to throw a brick out her window at me, but here I am doing her a favor," he gave a long-suffering sigh, "Tell her I took time out of my very busy schedule to take care of you two and have the house clear for a week."

"We'll be sure to tell her. Sorry for the inconvenience," Enjolras cut in before Grantaire could open his mouth and say something he hadn't thought through. It was infinitely more likely that Éponine had blackmailed him into letting them stay and he could only imagine what Montparnasse might have done to warrant attempted murder via brick. Probably nothing good.

After unlocking the door, he handed the key over to Enjolras. "That's the only key, so don't lose it." He threw open the door and began listing off rooms. There are two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs." He indicated the staircase just off the side of the entryway. "The kitchen is through here," he led them through a door to the left and into a small, untidy kitchen. "And there's a living room and the master bedroom though here." They walked through a door to the right. "And a bathroom here. This door leads down to the basement. There's a generator down there if the power goes out, the lines out here can be kind of flaky." He rubbed a hand distractedly through his hair. "Sorry the place is a mess," he said without sounding sorry, "they pay me to watch the place but I ain't a maid."

The place _was_ a mess, but it didn't feel lived in, it felt strangely empty. That was probably due to the fact that it housed a transient group of people. The remaining Thénardiers living in the house only lived there for certain times during the year when Monsieur Thénardier was doing work in the area, or at least that was the situation when Éponine had left. The rest of the time the property was in the ever-caring hands of Montparnasse. As a result, it looked cluttered, dirty, and yet still empty.

"Adds to the haunted aesthetic," Grantaire said dryly.

Montparnasse hummed like he was trying to remember something, "Rules are that you should probably stay out of the master bedroom, and the barn, and like just don't snoop around through shit. But I mean, I don't really give a fuck. Not my house. So, if you find anything weird, it's not on me..." He stopped as his phone vibrated and he spared it only a cursory glance before swearing. "Shit, I gotta go. You have my number if you need anything." He made off to leave through the hall to the front door, completing the loop they had taken through the house, but Enjolras stopped him.

"Hang on. Just one question."

He turned around at the door. "Shoot."

"Have you ever seen any ghosts here?"

Montparnasse gave him an indecipherable look. "Well, I'm not one to believe in spirits or whatever, but I don't spend the night here. Let's put it that way." He gave a wolfish grin, turning through the door and exiting the house.

"Well, that sounds ominous," Enjorlas frowned.

"Scared already?" Grantaire smirked, studying a boring painting of a garden that hung on the living room wall. All the pictures on the walls seemed to be trying to convince the passer through that the owners were sophisticated people. They were all boring, classy paintings, probably worth nothing as they hadn't been stolen and sold off. There were no family photos.

"It takes more than the word of a sketchy caretaker to scare me off."

Grantaire scoffed, "Caretaker is going a little far don't you think? I'll bet he uses this place just as much as Monsieur Thénardier. He's actually probably the true owner in terms of use. Not much homely pride though, but maybe you can relate there."

Enjolras was a shockingly messy person when it came to his living space. He wasn't even sure how the messes arose, he would just turn around and realize that his closet looked like it had exploded all over the room and papers covered every other available surface. He always knew where everything was though, and he couldn't stand for people to go messing with the placement of his decidedly organized mess.

"I would never let my house get this bad," he sniffed, defensively, "and you're more likely to find abandoned print outs of old court cases in my place than heroine needles, and I think that rather starkly sets us apart. How much illicit material do you think is stored away on the property?"

"Enough that I wouldn't want any cops showing up, so I'm warning you. There will be no gratuitous partying."

"Courf is the one you should worry about, or Bahorel."

"Don't pretend you're not a class A super partier, Apollo, I can't abide deceit."

"Abide this." Enjolars flipped him off, walking out the door to retrieve his suitcase as Grantaire sputtered behind him. Outside he caught the tail end of Montparnasse's vehicle disappearing up the driveway. It was somewhat comforting to know he was gone. Éponine probably wouldn't have let them go if she thought they would be robbed and murdered, but all the same they would keep the doors locked.

After carrying in their luggage, they stood at the foot of the stairs, both checking their phones for service. But alas, nothing. They were stuck in a house without service and without internet connection. For pity's sake, they were having to rely on a land line in case of emergencies. Who the fuck still used a land line?

After a sullen moment of morning the lack of internet connection Grantaire lowered his phone. "Well I'm not feeling spooked yet, though I am feeling an overwhelming urge to start snooping through things. I have to keep my mind occupied, I'm lacking stimulation."

"Well, don't look at me, it's not my job to stimulate you."

"Stimulating me doesn't have to be a job, you could stimulate me just because you want to and don't lie to me, Apollo, you know you want to."

"Shut up, I- _Whatever_ urges you may be having, I would advise you to heed our hosts advise and not snoop. I'm a little worried about what you might find." He wasn't exactly sure what sort of things might go on in this house.

"With any luck, enough to get Ép's dad locked away in a dark tower somewhere, never to return. But I suppose you're right, I'll wait for the others. We can do some sort of scavenger hunt meets illicit paraphernalia bingo."

"What we should really do is drive into town to pick up all the food."

Grantaire gave a dramatic sigh, "Oh fine, be responsible and boring, it's what you do best."

"That is aggressively untrue."

"It's partially untrue. You never have any fun, but you're also a fucking crazy person."

"I am completely rational and sane."

"You are well known to do utterly insane things like, for example, attempting to throttle a poor innocent student in the middle of a lecture."

"You were trying to get me to punch you!" It had been what Enjolras would go on to think of as their first official interaction. Grantaire had sat beside him in his anthropology lecture and started arguing with him about how to fix the American educational system. He wasn't even sure how that had come up, but they continued to argue in hushed whispers until eventually Enjolars had stood up, grabbed Grantaire by the front of the shirt and started shaking him. Under normal circumstances he would have never let this happen, but he was running on nothing but caffeine and delirious energy from lack of sleep and Grantaire had a particular talent for getting under his skin. They had been banished from the lecture for the day, and were forbidden from sitting together from then on, although as it turned out Grantaire didn't even take the class, he had just shown up to enrage Enjolras.

"I would never."

"You were trying to win a bet, Bahorel told me." Bahorel had also been the one to tell Grantaire where to find him and collected the winnings after the blond failed to punch him. Enjolras assumed that Grantaire had heard stories about some of his more... involved arguments from Bahorel and, given that he was the most infuriating person in existence, thought he might just be able to drive him insane in an otherwise calm and controlled environment. That was way back in their freshman year.

"I was trying to prove that you were crazy enough to do it. I didn't even know you yet and I knew you would do something wild."

"Not crazy, just passionate."

"Violently passionate then. And I didn't win the bet anyway because you failed to land a punch. I failed to account for your lack of fighting instinct."

"Now that is just a flat out lie, I can hold my own in a fight." He had done so in the past.

"Yes, but it makes me feel better about losing twenty bucks and falling on that poor guy behind me."

"Whatever, let's get going before it gets too late."

"Right behind ya."

The drive into town was a scenic one, or it would have been if it wasn't mid-December and snowless. Currently everything looked muddy and dead under a muted gray sky. The house was about half an hour outside of town down a winding road along the edge of a steep drop. Grantaire was making up for the lost time on the drive up by babbling on about apparently whatever he could think of. "Éponine said that her bus driver in middle school drove like a madman. Her road was always on Plan A when it was icy so they had to walk to the main road to get picked up, but sometimes they didn't call it and the bus would literally slide down the hills. She's probably lucky to be alive. Do you think all hillbilly kids have terrifying bus drivers?"

"I wouldn't know, my parents always drove me."

"Ugh, eleven-year-old me is so jealous it's not even funny. Also, just the idea of you as a hillbilly has me in literal stitches."

"What was eleven-year-old you like?" Enjolras suddenly realized he hadn't ever really thought about Grantaire's childhood. Or at least he'd never asked about it.

"Huh?" He seemed to have thrown the brunette for a loop.

"What were you like at that age?"

"Oh, I dunno, I was probably an insecure, sarcastic little shit, so not much has changed, I guess. I was a little shorter and had terrible taste in everything, but other than that probably not too much different."

"I find that hard to believe."

"Well, believe it, Apollo, I was at one point much shorter than I am today."

"You know what I meant."

"Maybe. So, what were you like back then? As violently passionate as ever? Beating up republicans on the playground?"

"Possibly. Usually, Combeferre would talk me down before it came to that. I got pretty good at taking punches to prove a point though."

"Sounds healthy."

"My parents made me promise to stop after I got a tooth knocked out of place."

"Which tooth?"

"Front left one. It didn't get knocked fully out, just nudged out of place by a fist. I had braces in high school so you can't tell now."

"Are you telling me you were not blessed from birth with a perfect smile?"

"My teeth were a mess until I was seventeen."

"I _need_ photographic evidence of this. Please tell me you have pictures."

"Believe it or not, I do not carry around childhood photos of myself like some sort of weirdo." The words came out defensively, but he didn't actually care if Grantaire saw his messed-up teeth, he was never particularly bothered by flaws in his appearance. The words were more for the express purpose of being difficult.

"Snaggle toothed Enjolras, snaggle-jolras," he giggled childishly.

"You are the actual worst."

"Oh, come now, Apollo, I'm sure you were a perfectly adorable child, angry and snaggle toothed as you were. At least now if you bite someone they won't immediately know it was you."

"Because that is a situation that I often find myself in."

"Hey, I'm just saying. You know what forensic evidence is like, they'll never find the right person without a unique bite. Just keep that in mind next time you find yourself meeting prominent political figures."

They continued to bicker their way to the grocery store where the shopping ended up taking longer than expected, but then they were shopping for thirteen people. Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Marius, Cosette, Joly, Musichetta, Jehan, Bossuet and Bahorel would all be coming down to stay in the house the next day. However, Joly might be too freaked out to actually stay, it took a good deal of persuading on the part of Musicetta and Bossuet for him to commit. Fueilly and Éponine couldn't get off work, but Éponine didn't want to go back to the house anyway.

Enjolars made sure to check his phone while they had service and let his friends know that they weren't at each other's throats yet. His friends seemed oddly invested in knowing what was going on, particularly Courfeyrac, which made him suspicious but he couldn't think of what would motivate that interest. Perhaps he made a bet on the type of physical or emotional damage they would inflict on each other, that seemed like something he might do.

Grantaire and Enjolras had been sent out ahead because Enjolras had been driving everyone insane, so he was banished from the apartment a day early out of concern for everyone's sanity. Grantaire was supposed to be going up to meet Montparnasse anyway and Courfeyrac had somehow convinced him to take Enjolars along. Enjolras suspected blackmail. That seemed the only plausible reason Grantaire would elect to spend this much time alone with him. Not that it was going badly so far... Secretly a tiny part of him was glad they were being forced to spend time together. Grantaire had joined their friend group shortly after the anthropology incident when Bahoral brought him to one of the ABC meetings. He had been disruptive and argumentative but everyone had taken to him instantly. Everyone except their unofficial leader. All these years later it had come to the point where Enjolras wanted to make friends rather than remaining friends by association but was unsure of how to do that exactly. Maybe this was his chance.

When they returned to the house it was well past dark out. As soon as the groceries were put in place Grantaire put in a frozen pizza.

"Should we take a look upstairs?" Enjolras asked, their suitcases were still sitting in the hall.

"Sure. Oh also, what's the plan for tomorrow? Nobody's getting here until late so we have basically a free day." The plan was that everyone would get there by eight.

Enjolras shrugged, "We could go to the library and look at articles about the murder. I don't know if Jehan wanted to go through the whole ghost investigator thing himself, but I think two of us would be more productive than the whole crew in a tiny library."

"Yeah, not that I wouldn't love to get thrown out of the library but you're probably right."

According to Éponine there had been a murder in the house immediately before her parents had bought it (that was evidently why they were able to afford it). In her words "Some hick loser blew his wife's brains out after he found out she was cheating on him then offed himself. A murder suicide type of deal." She wasn't sure whose ghost did the haunting.

The two non-ghostly inhabitants of the house made their way up the stairs, luggage in hand.

They first opened the door to the left.

"This must have been Éponine and Azelma's room," Grantaire observed as Enjolras flicked on the light. The walls were dark purple and covered with posters, drawings and pictures. It looked like the room of a teenager, but still had a number of childhood articles. It was hard to say which side belonged to which girl, as any evidence of Éponine seemed to have been removed when she ran away at eighteen.

It seemed that no one had been in for a long while, the two twin beds stood at either end of the small room, perfectly made. This room was different from what they had seen from the rest of the house in that it was not a complete mess, perhaps indicating that Azelma still used it. She had still been following their parents when Éponine had gone, unable to convince her sister to go along.

"How many times do you think they had to repaint the walls because Ép scribbled all over them," Grantaire wondered. Darling Éponine had a bad habit of drawing and writing all over the walls if you didn't watch her. She liked to draw threats on Enjolras' walls. Usually after having everyone over he would find a stick figure with curly hair on a pyre or being sawed in half or something equally horrible with an arrow indicating that the stick figure was him. He couldn't remember having ever wronged her, but then a lot of people seemed to hate him and he didn't have the time or energy to waste on figuring out why. Plus, Éponine seemed to hate a number of people without reason. He just had to hope she never carried out those threats.

"Probably only once. Get rid of it all in one go." Probably when she moved out.

"You're probably right. Ugh, I can see why she didn't want to come back here. It's bumming me out and I didn't even live it." He moved down the hall to the other room. "And here's Gavroche's room."

It was a smaller space with light blue walls. There was an empty terrarium full of rocks and dead plants on one side and an empty fish tank on the other. This room fit the look of the rest of the house, lived in by strangers but still with the original elements of the owner in place. The walls were covered in torn pages from books and the shelves were covered in weird rocks and wood carvings, though nothing that looked like it was worth anything.

Grantaire sighed, "I'd ask which room you want, but Éponine told me to stay out of hers."

"I suppose it's the girls room for me then." That was fine with him, he didn't care either way.

The oven timer when off downstairs and they hurried back to tend to the pizza.

"I'm trying to imagine your childhood room," Grantaire said, setting the pizza tray on the stove top to cool, "but all I can picture is a small angry child writing letters to his congressman at a 18th century gentleman's desk. Now that I think about it, you would fit in pretty well as a 18th century dandy. I bed you'd also make a pretty good vampire."

"Are you accusing me of something?" Enjolras said absently as he searched for a pizza cutter and found only an ordinary steak knife. Well, that would have to do.

"Of being a vampire or an eternal dandy? Possibly. I've been told I need to open my mind to the possibilities. Be optimistic, you know."

"It would be a pretty dangerous time to accuse me of being a vampire, if I were one."

"Why's that?"

"Well, you are trapped in a haunted house with me. Anything could happen and I could just blame the ghosts." He began cutting the pizza. To hell with waiting for it to cool, he was hungry.

"I'm not sure the cops would buy that ghosts killed me in this situation when an obvious vampire is telling the story and the body turns up drained of blood."

"Who said anything about draining you of blood? I would never be so obvious about it. It would be more to my advantage to drain you slowly to a reasonable anemic level then allow you to have some accident. But even if I could not resist you and the police brought me in, I am a vampire and I can be very persuasive." Enjolras gave his best imitation of a vampire's hypnotic stare, for a moment taking in Grantaire's positively tickled face before he then proceeded to slice his finger open. "Oops." Without thinking he stuck the finger in his mouth.

Grantaire grabbed the hand and pulled it away from his mouth to inspect the damage. It really wasn't that bad but as soon as it was free it began oozing down his finger.

"Hang on, I've got bandaids upstairs." Grantaire trotted off toward the stairs, smacking into the table as he left and swearing. As he left Enjolras started running his finger under the tap, listening to Grantaire rummage around through the floor above him. After a moment, he paused feeling off kilter. He couldn't quite place the feeling other than a heaviness in the air. He shook himself, turning when he heard a creek overhead and for a split second he thought he'd seen something move out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned toward it all he saw was an empty window to the darkness outside.

He snorted, chiding himself for letting the ghost talk get to him as Grantaire stumbled back into the room with a pack of superhero bandaids.

"Now let's see, who to give you," he mused, rifling through the box before pulling out a batman bandaid as Enjolras shook the water from his finger, which was still bleeding a little.

Grantaire quickly patched the wound.

"I guess you aren't a vampire after all."

"Vampires can't bleed?"

"Well, I suppose they can, but I dunno, I guess I'm thinking of the people from the x files. They were like clones or something and their blood was toxic. Or maybe they were human-alien hybrids. I don't remember, things got confusing." He took the knife and picked up cutting where Enjolras left off.

"Why did you give me a batman one?" he asked as he began taking his share of the food.

"Because honestly your faith in humanity is a little too superman, so I like to imagine there's a universe out there where you're a more cynical, edgy vigilante type. Actually, superman would have been way more fitting, you probably are some sort of alien."

"First a vampire, now an alien."

"What can I say, you are a suspiciously strange person."

They walked into the living room and set Grantaire's laptop on the coffee table in front of them, he had It on blueray, which Enjolras had not yet seen.

"I don't actually like Stephen King." Grantaire said as the movie started.

"Why not?" Enjolras asked, feeling like this was the start of a rant that was going to irritate him. He had never been much of a horror fan, he never saw the point.

"I value his contribution to the horror genre, but I hate the way he writes. I always hate the characters and it's usually a lot of boring shit before the ending disappoints you."

"Stop it, you're going to infect my enjoyment of his work."

"Sorry... One more thing."

"Grantaire."

"You wanna know what may favorite thing about him is?"

"No."

"My favorite thing is that he got hit by a van once. Like it was really serious and everything, but for some reason I find it hilarious and it makes me feel like a bad person."

"That's horrible and you _are_ a bad person."

"Well at least on that we agree... I do like this movie though."

They watched the movie in comfortable silence, something he hadn't been sure Grantaire was capable of. He found himself oddly enjoying it. After the movie's end they split off in a mostly non-literal sense as they were still sharing the same couch but Enjolras started working on some things on his laptop and Grantaire was drawing. They didn't head up to bed until nearly one. After brushing their teeth, they parted ways, Enjolras with a pleasant "Goodnight." and Grantaire with a teasing grin and a warning not to "let any ghostly figures crawl into bed with you."

When Enjolars found himself finally in bed, having taken the twin closest to the door, he spent a long while lying on his back staring up at the ceiling. A few moments before he had felt tired enough for sleep, but now his eyes refused to shut. He sighed, turning to the side facing inward toward the room, but after a persistent prickling at the back of his neck he turned toward the wall, pulling his covers up around his shoulders and feeling childish.

After a few false starts, jerking awake at the point of sleep, he finally drifted off only to wake an indeterminant amount of time later feeling something touch his hair. He was, in an instant, fully awake and ready to throw a mouse out of his bed but there was nothing there. With an exhausted sigh he pressed his face into his hands before laying back down, this time drifting off more easily. It must have been a dream.

Later still, he opened his eyes to the darkness and was unable to breathe; suddenly gasping, openmouthed, but not able to take in air for a few terrifying seconds. When he finally sucked in a shaky lungful of oxygen he laid there frozen, too terrified to move.

Irrational. He was being irrational. He was awake now and he was fine. He had a vague memory of this happening once before when he was very small and he had been fine then, he would be fine now. Still, he was stiff with fear. To be honest he wasn't even sure what he was afraid of, but the fear gripped him so tightly it was suffocating. As soon as he found his courage, he rolled over, completely covering his head in blankets like the comforter would shield him from harm. He remained awake and unmoving until light was coming through the windows.

XxxX

A/N: I wrote this because I couldn't get E and R's rhythm right for another thing I was trying to write and I still don't think I have it. Oh well. I'm posting this anyway to make myself write the rest, I might change parts when I do everything else.

Also, Grantaire is sober here bc I didn't want to deal with keeping track of when he was drinking. This story takes place in Pennsylvania because I like the mountains and I'm aggressively midwestern, not that I've spent much time in that particular state so it's a lot of made up garbage. Ignore any weird logical errors, a lot of stuff will probs be vague on the details. Like how old are they? No idea. I just wanted to try to get their flow but then things got a little out of hand.

My tumblr is opens-up-4-nobody if you wanna say hi

Thanks


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